So this is a maybe short review of a tablet that is on clearence from Misco (Not many left) and sold on that popular shopping channel that sells various junk products known as Ideal World (Which no longer has the product in stock). I bought mine from Misco and it came next day, considered i paid for a up to 3 day delivery, City Link are a good courier, i do trust them :).
If you want to have a look at the Website and what the company says about the Product then click THIS.
If you want to purchase this tablet from Amazon, click below:
If you want to have a look at the Website and what the company says about the Product then click THIS.
If you want to purchase this tablet from Amazon, click below:
UPDATE: If you are looking to install Jellybean (Android 4.1), look no further than to use Uberiod 2 by HCH from Techknow.net. That rom makes this tablet pretty amazing, make sure to flash the "Eken_MID7_W70_GSL1680_Z7Z67-030A" by adding a + at the beginning of the filename.
The Basics - What you get in the box.
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Now the specs of the Tablet:
Dimensions:
Now when you boot it up, you will see the following on the screen:
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| The GoTab Logo appears which this is also the bootloader starting. |
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| This is the when the tablet is nearly finished booting up. To show an Ice Cream Sandwich, a standard google stock ROM. |
Now once you have booted up the tablet, you will reach a lockcreen with a keylock, you have to slide your finger to get to the main screen which looks nice and simplistic :). This is known as the Launcher, which can be changed using the Google Play Store. But lets have a look below:
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| The launcher or home screen. Here you can place 25 applications onto your home screen. There are 5 home screens, swipe left or right on your finger to see them, or tap on the Plus icon to see all of them and add widgets or apps to them. |
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| Also with this tablet and many others it can rotate the display when the tablet has been rotated, if you did turn the tablet vertical, the launcher will look the same except more squashed. |
Now with Andorid you can password or pin protect it to prevent people using it after waking it from sleep mode. If you want to put password protection, go to settings and tap on security then you can change it from the top option. Doing this will show the screen below if you wake it from sleep:
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| The locksceen if you use PIN or Password Protection, the wallpaper looks dimmer |
Now if you've used an Android Tablet then the rest should be like any other tablet. Google Apps were installed (Except maps, not sure why that wasn't included but its easy to get off the play store). There were a few extra apps that were like Weather and Hive Reader. Also Angry Birds Seasons was included, many people know what that game is and i was enjoying it on my phone which i copied off my mums 6" GoTab.
In Detail -
The Power of the tablet
Now the tablet is more powerful than other tablets i've seen for under the £100 budget. Most can be slow but since this is a more powerful CPU (even more powerful than my Xperia Tipo which is a 800mhz Snapdragon) then games can run quite well on it.
Test 1 - CorsixTH or (Theme Hospital Port for android)
So this game is amazing and playing on the PC was good but playing it on a tablet is sooooo much cooler. Playing the game is good and not too bad, allthough the same is quite slow on normal speed. But if you put the game speed to Max speed, it runs at a good speed which is not too fast. The screen is wide enough but it can be a bit small on the height wise, but luckily the game maps the back button to close the menu prompts. It can drain the battery but not really badly.
Test 2 - AndroGens (SEGA Genesis/Megadrive Emulator)
Now this is another game i play, ok its an emulator but its still pretty good. I used to play GenesisA.D on my old phone and it was really well done, however that emulator no longer works on ICS and has been removed off the Play Store. But i found an alternative called AndroGens. Now this emulator does work quite nicely on the tablet. Runs games quite well, the framerate does drop by a slight frames but that is with frame skipping disabled. However there is not settings icon on the status bar which means it is impossible to load or save states from within the game :(. I've recently been replaying Sonic Spinball which is fun. Looks quite nice on the tablet too:
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| Starting Toxic Caves on AndroGens |
Test 3 - Youtube
Now everyone knows what youtube is, heck many of you know me from my vlogs there :). But with tablets, people want to play video on the go. I've tried a few videos out and it works quite well, the playback was not laggy and it was nice to see some of my subscriptions on there, as much as the YT app is poorly designed, but thats everyone copying facebook's idea of the sidebar :(, plays in both vertical and landscape, this does drain battery life but not as much as i thought it would do. Also the sound is crystal clear and quite loud, even at low volumes :)
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| Watching Epic Chef on the tablet, |
The Battery Life
Well this i think is the downfall of the tablet, the battery life is very poor using wifi, you can lose 5% of charge just by turning wifi on and leaving it for 5 minutes or even shorter. But if the wifi is off then the battery is better than expected, of course apps are cached so something is running but, looking from the battery in settings it shows that the display can take up alot of the battery, lowering the brightness doesn't affect the battery by a noticeable amount. The battery is a 3000Amh battery which is quite alot of current for a battery. Underclocking the tablet will help a great deal i think, but i'll get to the geek knowhow later.
Using Networks - WiFi, 3G, Ethernet and Cable connections
Now with wifi turned on, the speed is quite fast as much as it is for a 802.11g adapter inside. It can download a 1mb file fron a N150mbps router in a few seconds. Quite good.
Theres an extra i forgot to mention which improves the Tablet on the go. There is support for USB 3G Dongles. Now this is a good extra from GoTab and below is a screenshot of the dongles Supported:
Many of those you might not know of, but i do have one dongle that is supported (its the T-Mobile Broadband Stick 615) and it works fine on T-mobile/EE. However this will drain battery life faster than when wifi is on, that is since it is powering the dongle as well as using the internet. But i've only tested this once.
But another nice option is that if you have a USB to Ethernet adapter, the tablet has support of that. If you connect it up, it will be able to set it up. Also PPPoE is supported if you connect this straight to your Cable/Virgin/BT Infinity line (Using a USB to Ethernet adapter of course).
Another good thing is that there is a Portable Hotspot feature in settings so using either the 3G Dongle or using PPPoE you can turn the tablet into a mini Wifi Router for a day (i would NOT RECOMMEND IT for prolonged use) which saves worry about sharing a connection.
The Camera
So with the tablet, its useful withe the camera at the top right corner, its useful for taking pics and maybe i might use it for videos but that might be for later :). The quality however is basic webcam quality so you won't expect amazing quality. Enjoy a quick pic i have taken on it and the details of that pic if you want to know the technical image specs:
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| Just a quick pic of me when i'm typing this review up |
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| Some of the technical image specs when on details from properties from right clicking on the pic in windows. |
For the advanced
Well this is quite a good value for money tablet. However i've noticed things are different when i saw this on google play (login on your pc to find your devices and what Google Certification actually calls them):
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| Notice it mentions WonderMedia and the model number is the same as the GoTab after GBT |
Now that means from research, Wondermedia is a Taiwanese manufacturer. This means it technically is a cheap asian knock off. Now that can cause problems when wanting to do more than just generally use the tablet. Like rooting the tablet and updating or changing the ROM. It turns out the tablet is called a WM8850 (Which if you notice is the same number as the ARM Processor from VIA). That and there are variations of the WM8850 which makes it difficult to know what version the GoTab is, to this day, I still don't know what variation it is.
Rooting the tablet is NOT EASY if you don't have the right tool. Luckily i found the tool and it was called RootBurner. Follow the guide in that link and you can root the tablet, then delete Superuser and replace it with SuperSU if you wish to. Thats what i have done and it worked fine.
I tried other rooting methods and it turned out it nearly bricked the tablet and caused bugs with the tablet lagging really badly to the tablet not turning off since it would restart after i pressed the power/sleep button. My fix for that was to let the battery die down completely and that has fixed the problem as far as i know :)
UPDATE: If you are looking to install Jellybean (Android 4.1), look no further than to use Uberiod 2 by HCH from Techknow.net. That rom makes this tablet pretty amazing, make sure to flash the "Eken_MID7_W70_GSL1680_Z7Z67-030A" by adding a + at the beginning of the filename.
The Verdict
So you've read about the tablet and considering it. My opinion is to buy one but don't expect it to do everything you want it to do.
The pros:
- Good quality screen
- Quite fast and not as laggy as other tablets i've used
- The USB Port
- Better camera than other tablets for the same price
- Looks nice on the front and rear
- Good sound quality
The Cons
- A cheap Asian tablet so expect LQ parts
- Rom devlopement and rooting is not as easy as maybe well known brand tablets
- Could be better with a front camera
So that sums up this review. Enjoy it and any questions you can tweet me :)